Vilna, Warsaw, Wroclaw, and Cyprus

Well, after quite the harrowing journey, we made it to Vilna. And the journey we went on once we arrived was worth every ounce of stress and frustration to get there. 

We began the trip learning about Yiddish culture in Vilna before the war. Because my name is Yiddish, I feel a special connection to the language. I was named for all my ancestors from Eastern Europe who spoke Yiddish so getting to learn about it in the place where many of my ancestors once lived was really special. We met a scholar of Yiddish who gave us some freebies and I got a book of megillat Esther in Yiddish. I may not ever be able to read it but I am very happy to have it. 

We visited a statue of and the grave of the Vilna Gaon and talked about whether intellect or spirituality guide our Jewish practice. I loved getting the opportunity to bring Jewish history into our present lives as spiritual leaders. 

The next day we focused our studies on the Holocaust in Vilna. We stood on the spot where the Ghetto wall once stood and read poetry written inside its walls.

Toys (A. Sutzkever)

My daughter, you must care for your toys, 

Poor things, they're even smaller than you.

 Every night, when the fire goes to sleep, 

Cover them with the stars of the tree.

Let the golden pony graze
The cloudy sweetness of the field.
Lace up the little boy's boots 

When the sea-eagle blows cold. 

Tie a straw hat on your doll
And put a bell in her hand.
For not one of them has a mother,
And so they cry out to God.
Love them, your little princesses¬
I remember a cursed night
When there were dolls left in all seven streets
Of the city.
And not one child. 

There was not a dry eye in the group. 

After our time in Vilna, we traveled on our minibus (as I listened to the new Taylor Swift album!!) to Zhezmir. Zhezmir was a shtetl once rich with Jewish life. Now, only a synagogue remains as the remnant of what once was. One of the residents of the town has made it his life’s work to take care of the synagogue. And because we are emerging clergy, we didn’t just treat this space as a museum. We were in a synagogue - so we davened Shacharit. I felt immense sadness alongside such joy and pride at the opportunity to bring prayer back into that space. The wooden walls and the cold air lifted our voices and made the prayer feel even more urgent. It was one of the most meaningful praying experiences I have ever had. 

And then we continued to Kovno, Lithuania. As many of you may have seen in my dad’s Facebook post, Kovno is an important place in our family history. My dad’s mom’s mom’s mom was born in Kovno. She left Lithuania in the late 19th century to begin a life in the United States. And there I was, five generations later, standing in the synagogue in Kovno where she once prayed. One of my classmates who is a cantorial student stood on the Bima and sang the song Chai by Ofra Haza. 

“׳’חי חי חי כן אני עוד חי. עם ישראל חי. זה השיר שסבא שר אתמול לאבא והיום אני. אני עוד חי’ 

 

“I’m still alive, alive, alive. The Nation of Israel is alive. This is the song that grandpa sang yesterday to dad. And today it’s me”

To sing this song in the synagogue where my ancestors once sang was meaningful beyond words. Something that kept coming up for me during my time in Lithuania and Poland is how grateful I am that my family got out of Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. They all got out, and they all met each other, and because of that I am here today. I couldn’t get this one lyric from the Matilda musical (lol) out of my head “every life is unbelievably unlikely. The chances of existence are so infinitely small.” Kovno, Lithuania is as good a spot as any to have an existential crisis. Well, this was less of a crisis and more of a reaffirmation of my purpose. 

Judaism is a magical thing that allows us to connect to the past, present and future - l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation. Judaism is a long, long relay race. And now the baton has been handed to me. And I will carry it with pride and joy. And I will pass it on to future generations - showing them how it can be used to wipe out hatred, bring more love, and build a better world. 

After Kovno we boarded the bus for Warsaw. Shabbat came in as we crossed into Poland. So we stopped at a gas station and bought a bottle of wine. On the bus we made kiddush and sang a shockingly gorgeous and ruach-filled kabbalat Shabbat service. I’m calling it “Shabbat on wheels.” 

                                                   (this is me trying to push the cork into our wine with a pencil)

Saturday morning in Warsaw, Levi and I led a Shacharit service in a hotel room. It was a new challenge but we made it work. I gave a short dvar torah in place of a Torah service that I’ve included here: 

In our Torah this week, God lays out the rituals and requirements for cleansing oneself in the face of impurity. But we don’t just hear about impurity of the self. 

כנגע נראה לי בבית 

A plague is in my house 

We learn here not just about impurity of person but also impurity of place. And it feels appropriate to be reading this this week, a week when we have been to so many impure places. We are searching for meaning in places plagued by destruction, death, and pure evil. 

The Torah tells us that there are some plagued houses that just need to be destroyed. It needs to be destroyed and what remains needs to be taken outside the city never to be used again as a dwelling place. But I’m less interested in the houses fated with total destruction. I’m interested in the houses that have the potential to be pure. 

Once the priest sees that the house is free of the plague, he performs a ritual, a sacrifice. He marks time and space to free the house of its impurity. But he doesn’t just sacrifice one bird. He sacrifices one, and he lets the other fly free. Only then is the house finally clean. 

When we’ve arrived at these holy unholy plagued sights, how have we marked the space? How have we, through song and prayer, through pouring sand from the beaches of Tel Aviv, re sanctified space? 

וְשִׁלַּח אֶת-הַצִּפֹּר הַחַיָּה, אֶל-מִחוּץ לָעִיר--אֶל-פְּנֵי הַשָּׂדֶה; וְכִפֶּר עַל-הַבַּיִת, וְטָהֵר.

Then he shall let the living bird loose outside the city in the open field, and make atonement for the house, and it shall be clean

In every synagogue we’ve visited, every sight of mass murder, every ghetto wall, we have brought some holiness into some of the most unholy of places. We live , we sing, we pray. We are the living bird. When we leave this place, go out into the sadeh, we must take the pain with us. But we can be at peace knowing that through our Jewish practice, our holy language, and the power of song, we have left this land a little bit holier. 

On Saturday we also visited the Polin museum and toured Ghetto-related sights in Warsaw. It was intense beyond words. That night, we had our last dinner together as a group. We got to reflect on everything we had seen and been together as a group, which was very necessary. 

And then on Sunday (after a bit more time touring around Warsaw), my friend and classmate Will and I journeyed to Wroclaw to begin the Pesach Project. The Pesach Project is an HUC tradition that sends first year students to FSU communities to lead Seder. It used to take place in Ukraine but since the war it has been relocated to Poland. Will and I did not know what to expect but we were excited to lead our first Seder. 

Our first day, one of the board members gave us a tour of the synagogue. It was gorgeous. Abraham Geiger (the founding father of reform Judaism) was once the rabbi there, back when Wroclaw was part of Germany rather than Poland. As two future reform clergy, Will and I felt like we were standing in the footsteps of a giant. The synagogue also ended up with many Jewish artifacts that used to be held in Nazi-created “Jewish museums.” We got to see medieval manuscripts in prime condition. And it was nice to see that they ended up back in the hands of the Jewish people. 

Will and I led a beautiful seder, but we basically led a seder for ourselves with forty people watching (and one woman recording the whole thing on her iphone). The loss of Jewish knowledge and culture due to both the Nazis and the soviets was more palpable than I have ever seen it. The silence in the room when we got to the chorus of Dayenu made me question if the renewal of Jewish life in Eastern Europe is even possible. But despite this sadness, we met many wonderful people who were so happy to have us there, bringing song and Jewish joy back into the space. 

After Wroclaw, I spent a day in Krakow where I visited a friend who is currently working at the JCC there. She toured me around the community center and all hope was restored. The Jewish renewal happening in Krakow is magical. And the same is happening in Warsaw. The smaller cities and towns might just need a little more time (and maybe a full time rabbi). I had a wonderful dinner with two of my classmates who did their Pesach project in Gdansk. It was so fun to swap stories about our different seder experiences. 

I stayed the night at the Krakow airport so that the next morning I could catch my early flight to Cyprus. I woke up at 5am, got on the shuttle and found myself in the Krakow airport staring at the departures screen. And my flight was not there. I pulled up my reservation only to learn that my flight was out of the Katowice airport, not the Krakow airport. Oy! Of course at the end of this insane week and a half I would end up at the wrong airport. I took a deep breath, remembered that worse things have happened to the Jews in this country, and found a flight out of Gdansk. After a six hour train ride, I finally ended up at the Gdansk airport and on my new flight to Cyprus.

Let’s just say my beach weekend in Cyprus was very much needed. And now I sit on the balcony of my hotel in Paphos, watching the sunset over the sea, and thinking about everything I have done and been through in the past two weeks. Tomorrow I head back to Jerusalem for my last three weeks. I cannot believe how quickly this semester has gone by and how much I have grown and changed since January.

Thank you all for being with me on this journey. 

Sammy Spider's First Siren

Well it’s been a hell of a week and a bit. 

When I decided to come back to Israel in January, I weighed many scenarios, including a regional war with Iran getting involved. I decided that was wildly unlikely and that if it happened, the iron dome would protect me. Which it did! Thank god. But man was the attack from Iran inconvenient. 

On Thursday when news came that an attack from Iran would be coming in the next 24-48 hours, I got nervous. Everywhere I walked I kept an eye out for where I would run in case sirens went off. It was stressful to live on the edge like that at all times. I had the option to be in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem when said attack would happen and I was sure that Jerusalem would be safer so I stayed in my apartment. I cannot believe I was wrong on that one. 

Because of Passover, our spring break started on Thursday. So the plan was to get on a plane Sunday morning at 5am for Vilna with many of my classmates. We would travel around Vilna and then Warsaw and then separate to lead Seders around Poland. With the prospect of an attack from Iran, I was reassured to know that I already had a flight booked to get out. I guess the idea of air space closing had not crossed my mind. 

Saturday night, I went to the protest for elections and to free the hostages. I was nervous about being at a large gathering when sirens might go off so I left pretty soon after I arrived. And then, since I had to leave for the airport at 1:30am, I fell asleep around 10pm. Shortly after I fell asleep, Iranian drones were launched and on their way to Israeli airspace. While asleep, I received many texts from my wonderful, worried parents and my teacher leading the trip who alerted us that Israeli airspace was closed and our flight would be cancelled. I half woke up to see these texts, couldn’t be bothered, and immediately fell back asleep. Apparently half asleep Shayna only cares about getting back to being fully asleep. And then at 2am I woke up to a loud boom and the windows in my apartment shaking. The way my body responded reminded me of waking up to an earthquake in California. I walked out to the living room of my apartment to find my roommates calm and collected. And then the siren went off. My roommates were in Israel on October 7th and throughout the war so they knew what to do, which was beyond helpful for panicky Shayna who had never heard a siren before. Since we don’t have a bomb shelter or a protected staircase, my roommates closed all of our blinds and told me to stand in the most inner part of the apartment.  I sat on the floor, shaking. We turned on the news, I called my parents, and tried to keep calm. I imagined writing a children’s book called “Sammy Spider’s First Siren” and that made me smile and kept me distracted. 

After fifteen minutes, my roommates said it was safe to go back to our rooms and that they were going to try to get some sleep. I couldn’t imagine going back to sleep after that. But I got into bed and watched CNN on my computer. Next thing I knew, it was the morning and I woke up to the director of our program checking in on all of us to make sure we were okay. Thank God, I was. 

And then it was time to figure out what to do about our missed flight to Lithuania. About five of my classmates (a third of the trip) had already left for Vilna the day before. So the trip was on and now it was up to us to get ourselves there. Some of my friends decided to cancel and stay in Israel for break, totally understandable. But I really wanted to go on the trip and even more so, really wanted to get out of Israel. So I called a cab to Ben Gurion Airport. The streets were quiet and the roads were empty. 

And then I had the most Israeli experience ever at the airport. As soon as I walked in, I ran into friends from the Bay Area who were also trying to get a flight. We took a selfie (of course) and sent it to my parents. 

And then I went to the line to try to get tickets on an airline called Israir (yes it’s as bad as it sounds). And it was not a line but a giant blob of people yelling at the one agent. Sunday was also the first day of spring break for Israeli schools so a lot of peoples’ flights were cancelled and a lot of people were trying to get out. As I stood in the blob, I noticed that the families around me were also trying to get to Warsaw. We started talking to each other about our plans and how terrible the airline is, which led one of them to make a WhatsApp group with all the people trying to get to Warsaw on this Israir flight. Where else in the world would that happen?? When I finally got to the front of the blob, the agent put me on the waitlist for the flight. And by waitlist I mean he wrote my name and phone number on the back of an old boarding pass. At this point I was fairly confident I would not be getting on that flight. 

So I got on the train to Tel Aviv to be with my cousins who had graciously invited me to stay with them. And they had takeout from my favorite Tel Aviv restaurant waiting for me when I arrived! I took a very long nap at their apartment and then met up with my roommate who had also decided to spend the day in Tel Aviv. And in Tel Aviv everything was so normal. You would have no idea Iran had attacked the night before. We sat at a cafe and I scoured the internet for flights to Eastern Europe. I was most definitely (like my dad) a travel agent in a past life. I booked a flight for two days from then and then went with my roommate to the beach to watch the sunset. The calm after the storm was unreal. 

At dinner, my wonderful friend Levi (who was also a travel agent in a past life) called to tell me that he had found a way to get to Vilna the next day. We got our friend Danielle on board and booked our flights. Our teacher assured us to book the flight whatever it cost, that the Jewish people would help us pay for it :). 

And so the next day, I met Levi and Danielle at Ben Gurion, where it was much calmer than the day before. We checked in and went through security with ease. I cannot explain the joy we felt sitting on that plane as it took off and left Israeli airspace. 

And then we landed in Larnaca, Cyprus. From Cyprus we flew to Vienna, where we sprinted to catch our next flight. From Vienna we flew to Warsaw. And then Levi rented a car and drove us the six hours to our apartments and classmates waiting for us in Vilna. 

It was perhaps the most insane travel journey I have ever been on. But it was worth it to get to this journey in Eastern Europe. And it wasn’t so bad with such good friends by my side. When we arrived in Vilna around 3 in the morning, we were absolutely ready for a night of sleep. 

And then the real pilgrimage began…